


All Right, the Panic Recedes

by TheAutotheist



Series: A Girl, A Guy, and the Never-Ending War [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 20:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2555285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAutotheist/pseuds/TheAutotheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steph Rogers finds an unlikely friend in Tony Stark, and ends up spilling a story to him that she's never told anyone, about a past and a person she had been trying so hard to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Right, the Panic Recedes

**Author's Note:**

> Like the third work in this series, it uses the same characters, but doesn't necessarily fall on the same timeline. You don't have to read the parent work for this to make sense. All you need to know if 1) Female Steve, and 2) Steph and Bucky got together after she saved him from the Hydra factory.

Steph walked out of the locker room after a SHIELD mission, prepared to head towards the garage, but a familiar voice stopped her. She turned around in the lobby to see Tony Stark coming from the direction of the elevators. When he saw her, he immediately made his way over and flashed his usual arrogant grin.

“Hey, Cap,” he said.

Steph blinked, still too surprised at seeing Tony Stark in the SHIELD Washington, DC headquarters. “What are you doing at SHIELD?” she finally asked. “Aren’t you living in New York now?”

“I am,” he said. “I’m here for business. I had some suggestions for improvements to the Helicarrier engines after I, you know, got to see them up close.”

“Yes, I know. I was there.” Steph smiled, over her surprise.

“There not pulling the lever, so that I could experience first hand what the inside of a blender is like?”

“No, there getting shot at while I was trying to save your ass.” She jabbed a finger at his chest, but then laughed. “It’s good to see you, Tony.”

“Same. How you been, Cap?” He smiled too.

“Good. SHIELD keeps me busy, as you can imagine…”

“You were just leaving, though, right?” He glanced behind her towards the entrance to the garage. “Come have dinner with me. So we don’t have to stand in SHIELD’s lobby to catch up.”

“Tony…” Steph said slowly.

He held his hands up in a placating gesture. “Hey, just as friends. I swear I’m not trying to hit on you.”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled. “Fine. Let me get my bike from the garage.”

“No need.” He steered her towards the front of the building, where a shiny red sports car was parked “You can get it later.”

“Tony, I shouldn’t leave it…”

He cut off her protests and five minutes later they were driving to some restaurant. Steph wasn’t entirely sure how Tony had won that argument, but he had. Somehow, it seemed like Tony managed to win arguments very easily.

The restaurant he chose was probably too fancy to allow her in wearing jeans, knee-high boots, and a plaid shirt, but no one stopped her, probably because she was with Tony, even though he was wearing a suit with sneakers.

He pulled a small device out of his pocket when they sat down and she thought for a second it was a tape recorder, but then she realized it was the exact opposite, it disrupted recordings.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

“SHIELD doesn't need to listen in to everything we say.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, which made him raise an eyebrow.

“You don’t think SHIELD has Captain America bugged?”

Steph opened her mouth to deny it, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like exactly the kind of thing SHIELD would do. So she closed her mouth and crossed her arms. “Shouldn’t they have figured out how to stop your hacking technology from last time?”

“Last time,” Tony smiled, “I hacked into SHIELD’s computers, a few minutes later, Barton blew the system with a virus. So they never found my tech.”

“Wasn’t that lucky for you?” Steph smiled lightly and leaned back in her chair. “How have you been, Tony? I heard what happened around Christmas…”

He shrugged one shoulder nonchalantly, but it looked more like an act of appearing unconcerned, than actual nonchalance. “There are good days and there are bad days.”

“I was on a mission, otherwise I would have tried to help.”

He waved off the suggestion. “I managed to take care of it. Don’t worry about it, Cap.”

She shook her head. “And I thought coming back from the dead was supposed to be my trick. It seems like you’re trying to out-do me. But now you’ve done it twice.”

“Three times, if you count escaping from a terrorist camp after months of imprisonment.”

Steph looked at him and tried to determine if he was being serious or if he was still joking. “Okay, three times then.” She sighed. “I know from personal experience that this is probably the last thing you want to hear, but are you okay?”

“You’re right. I’ve heard that question too much.” He looked at her for a moment. “Honestly, it’s surprising it took as long at New York for me to crack. But I’ve been talking with someone.”

“Oh really?” Steph raised an eyebrow. Somehow she couldn’t imagine Tony Stark seeing a therapist.

“Yeah, Bruce.”

“ _Bruce_?” she asked. “Bruce Banner?” And then she laughed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. But isn’t he the wrong kind of doctor?”

“That’s what he keeps telling me.”

Steph laughed again and shook her head. “Only you.” She smiled at him. “Well, I hope it helps. And if there’s ever anything I can do…”

“If I ever need any help from someone in a spangly outfit, you mean?” He smiled lightly, quoting her, quoting him.

“It’s not spangly anymore, actually.”

“So I heard. Not very Captain America without the red, white and blue.”

Steph shrugged. “That uniform was a bit too colorful for stealth work.”

“Is that what you’re doing now? Learning how to be a spy?” It sounded like it was supposed to be a joke, but something in Tony’s tone of voice sounded slightly bitter, or accusatory.

“I go where I’m needed,” she said levelly. “And I’m not a symbol anymore. Back then, it was all about propaganda. It was about keeping everyone believing the Allies would win the war, no matter how many people died…”

Tony broke off the end of a breadstick and popped it into his mouth. “You’re still a symbol, Cap. Just make sure it’s for the right thing.”

“You still think SHIELD is questionable.”

“Of course I do. You can’t tell me you never doubt SHIELD, because I know that would be a lie. You went looking through their stuff on the Helicarrier too.”

Steph sighed and picked at her food. “Yes, sometimes. Fury doesn’t tell me everything. And that’s frustrating. But I do still think I’m doing good.”

“Just make sure you keep thinking that. Be careful, Steph.”

“I am.” She smiled. “Though it’s interesting to see Tony Stark worry about someone other than himself.”

“Hey, I worry about lots of other people. Pepper, Happy, Rhodey.”

“How is Pepper, by the way?”

He shrugged and spread his hands. “We’re going through one of those periods of being broken up because I’m—”

“A bit of a self-centered jerk?” she cut him off, and then smiled in amusement.

“Something like that.”

“You two actually do belong together. She’s probably the only one who could put up with you.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Steph shook her head. “Just apologize for whatever it is you did.”

“Yeah, yeah. I will, when I get back to New York.”

“Good.” She got distracted when their actual food came because it was ridiculously good. She was the one who had been living in DC, but she never knew about this place. Trust Tony to know where the best and most expensive restaurants in every major city were.

“Damn, Cap,” he said after a minute. “Slow down.”

“Shut up. You try having a metabolism that burns four times faster than the average person’s.”

He leaned forward, a grin on his face. “So is it true? You really can’t get drunk?”

Steph’s fork hovered for a second before she set it down. “No, I don’t think so.”

He leaned back again. “Shame. There’s almost no point if you can’t get drunk.”

“Spoken like a true drunk.”

“Have you ever wanted to, since you got the muscles?”

Steph looked down at her plate, and found she wasn’t really that hungry anymore. “Yeah. I even really tried once. It didn’t work… Stayed completely sober.”

Tony seemed to realize he’d touched a nerve, because the smile dropped slightly. “Well, it’s probably better. A drunk Captain America is probably not something you’d want to see.”

Steph gave him half a smile. “I could never be as bad as you, though.”

“That is very true. A drunk Iron Man is way worse.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Hey, so, that exhibit at the Smithsonian is opening soon, isn’t it?”

Steph groaned and ran her hand over her face. “You mean the one about my life? Do you know how strange it is for people to a, decide there should be a museum exhibit about you, and then b, actually create it?”

Tony smiled again. “Well, I’ve been in the tabloids since I was pretty young, so that’s practically the same thing. At least the museum exhibit will probably only portray you positively.”

Steph laughed. “I hope so. Can’t have people coming after me because of something they saw in a museum.”

“Are you going to go see it?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. It would be kind of… surreal. And then seeing people react to my story…”

“Then let’s go see it now.”

“Wait, what?” She looked at him. “It’s not open yet. And the museum itself is probably closed for the night.”

Tony smirked. “Most of the stuff in there was donated by Stark Industries, because my dad hung onto a lot. So I have access.”

“Of course you do.”

“What do you say, Cap? Up to an adventure?”

Steph thought about it for a moment. “Okay. Let’s go see the exhibit.”

 

So that’s what they did. Tony wasn’t kidding about being able to get them in. The exhibit was mostly complete, too. Though none of the television displays were on, so they couldn’t see all the videos the museum had planned. It was almost eery walking through the echoing half-dark halls.

Steph stopped in front of the Howling Commandos display and looked at the seven mannequins positioned in a V. She loosely placed her hands on her elbows and looked at each of the uniforms, and the corresponding painting above them.

“That’s a bit flamboyant,” Tony said from beside her, which made her laugh.

“They were always doing that with Captain America. The All-American Girl,” she said in a sing-song voice. She turned to smile at him, and another display caught her eye. The smile immediately dropped from her face as she silently moved past Tony. In the middle of the room, on a glass wall, was etched a bio of Bucky, complete with a recreation of an old, grainy newspaper photo.

Steph stared at the picture, and then read through the bio twice. It was so simple. It made him sound honorable, like he was. But there was so much missing. Bucky’s existence couldn’t be condensed into just two paragraphs.

Tony walked over and looked at her before looking up at the display. “That’s your friend, right?”

“Yeah,” Steph said thickly.

He looked at her again, but she didn’t turn her head, or meet his eyes. Instead, she kept looking at the grainy picture of Bucky. Eventually, Tony looked back at it as well. “Only Howling Commando to die in the line of duty, huh?”

Steph crossed her arms over her chest. It had been years. Not just the seventy while she was frozen in ice. It had been more than two years since she woke up. But this still hurt. Thinking about how Bucky died, how she could have saved him, how she should have, it was such fresh grief. And here it was, laid out where anyone could see it, even if they didn’t say his death was Captain America’s fault. She still knew.

Steph turned away and walked out of the room so fast she was practically sprinting. She didn’t stop until she was outside again. It was full dark, and the only light came from a streetlight and the general light pollution of the city. She ran down the steps and stopped against one of the handrails before dropping down onto the lowest step. She wasn’t quite at the point of putting her head in her hands, but she gazed out across the Mall numbly.

She sat like that for a few minutes, letting her mind go completely blank, until Tony walked up behind her and sat down on the step above hers.

“You’re going to get your suit dirty,” she said quietly.

Behind her, there was a sound like Tony had snorted at her comment. “Doesn’t matter.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think that that would be hard on you.”

Steph shook her head. “No, don’t be sorry. I didn’t know either. It was…”

“It wasn’t just your past, right? It was seeing that stuff about your friend.”

“Bucky…” She leaned forward and clasped her hands together over her knees. “Yeah, I…” she trailed off as her voice failed her.

“Kind of sounds like you have something you want to get off your chest. I think there’s a cafe near here if you want to sit and talk.”

Steph laughed one short laugh, with no humor in it. “Maybe I should.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Okay, lead the way, Mr. Stark.”

Steph let Tony pick the drinks. She sat at a table in the small cafe, away from the other patrons, though there weren’t many at this time of night, just people focused on their laptops. Tony chose some fancy drink with a foreign name for himself, and Steph had black coffee. She wrapped her fingers around the cup, comforted by its warmth, while Tony sat back in his chair and sipped the frothy foam thing he had.

Steph looked down into the inky blackness of her drink. “I first met Bucky Barnes when I was seven or eight,” she said, without any preamble. “I was…” she half-smiled to herself, “I was standing up against these ten year olds who had tried to take a toy away from a little boy, a toddler, really. It was a train, or something. And he was crying. So I jumped in to defend him. At that age, bullies didn’t really care if you were a girl or boy, they were going to beat you up if you got in their way. So there I was, about to get beaten to a pulp by boys much bigger than me, and then this… this kid just jumped on the leader’s back and yelled at him. We got in a scuffle, and the little boy ran off with his train. By the end, the two of us had bruises, but the bullies at least knew we weren’t going to back down, and finally left.

“When the dust settled, he looked at me and said, ‘That was pretty stupid. Standing up to those kids.’ I was all ready to yell at him, to try to take him on too, but then his face lit up with this stunning smile.” She smiled too, thinking about it. “And then he said, ‘But it was also kinda fun.’ He held out his hand and said, ‘I’m Bucky Barnes. Nice to meet’cha.’ We were friends instantly.” She laughed quietly. “Though I didn’t even know his real name was James for weeks, because almost everyone we knew called him Bucky.” She rolled the cup back and forth between her palms, still looking down into the dark coffee.

“We were pretty much inseparable, and he never cared that I was a girl. He never treated me any different or like I couldn’t take care of myself.” She finally picked up the cup and took a long, slow sip, before setting it down again. “He was my best friend. And I…” She hesitated over the sentence she was about to say. “After what happened in Pearl Harbor, Bucky enlisted. And then… then he was gone. And I started trying to find every way possible to enlist too, but, you know, no one wanted a scrawny little girl. And then he was sent overseas. And I got into the SSR, and had the procedure. And then I was a little dancing puppet for a senator.”

“Yeah, senators can be real assholes,” Tony said.

Steph smiled and glanced at him. “That’s a section of the Captain America history people don’t talk about much. They like to think Captain America was a war hero, not a gaudy show girl. I… well, it was easy to forget about the actual war with all that going on. You should have heard the way actual soldiers cat-called me when I did USO shows.”

“Men are assholes too.”

“Most, but not all.” She looked at Tony. “And then I heard that Bucky’s unit, the 107th, was mostly killed or captured by Hydra. They say I was a hero, that I did spectacular, brave things. It wasn’t that. I went to that factory, I disobeyed orders, to find Bucky. I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I was trying to find my best friend, because I couldn’t believe he could just be dead, especially when I had been so close, wasting my time.” She smiled weakly at him. “Your dad helped, you know. Because he and Agent Peggy Carter were the only ones crazy enough to.” Tony’s expression was hard, but he didn’t say anything.

“I found the other prisoners first, and I wasn’t going to leave without letting them out, so I did. That was probably why we were able to escape. And then against all odds, I found him. He had been tortured, and he was delirious, but he joked with me.” She laughed, but it was shaky, almost like it came out over a sob. “The stupid idiot could barely stand and he was joking, even when we could have been facing death.”

She clasped her hands again over her coffee cup, resting her elbows on the table. “He should have been sent home, honestly. After what he’d been through. I should have insisted he go back to Brooklyn. But he wanted to stay. And I had tried so hard to find him, so I was relieved he stayed. Sometimes I like to think I could have saved him by making him go home, but I know he never would have gone, especially if I stayed to fight. We were a great team, with the other Commandos. We made a difference. I finally felt like I was doing what was right. We even managed to take out most of Hydra’s facilities. And then… then…”

“Then he died, right?”

Steph nodded over her hands, without looking at Tony. “We were on this train, trying to capture one of Hydra’s top scientists in order to find the location of the hidden main Hydra base. We were… ambushed as soon as we got on. And separated. Like always, it was nothing we couldn’t handle.” She paused, remembering it. “He was amazing. I had super strength, but he was normal. Even pinned down by three Hydra agents, he didn’t falter.” She stopped and her hands shook slightly. “It was my fault. I knew where we were, that enemies were everywhere, but I let my guard down, and only barely managed to cover this blast from one of their Tesseract guns. I must have been knocked off my feet, because the next thing I knew, Bucky was standing there, shooting a handgun at this guy covered head to toe in armor, while holding my shield. He was covering me, and that’s why the next blast knocked him off the train.

“I… I almost caught his hand. I almost stopped him from falling. But I didn’t. I watched him fall. I just… I held onto the side of the train and watched him fall to his death. And it was like… I couldn’t do anything. Like what the hell had I been fighting for? I still did my duty, found that base, took out Schmidt’s plane, stopped Hydra. All of that heroic crap. But my best friend was still dead.” She looked out the window of the coffee shop. It was dark, so all she saw was her own reflection, short blonde hair, blue eyes, grim expression. “Then I woke up in this century, and everyone else I knew was dead too. And it didn’t… It was like I had just lost him again.” She looked at Tony. He wasn’t smirking, or smiling, or bored. He was watching her, waiting for her to finish. “So I do what I can, as much as I can, to separate myself from my past. To try to do some good. To try to feel like I’m not so empty…”

His eyes moved back and forth, searching her face. The look he was giving her was so similar to the look he had when she had confronted him on the helicarrier after Coulson was killed, when she had asked if it was the first time he had lost a soldier, because she knew exactly what that was like. “Were you in love with him?”

Steph smiled a very small smile and looked back down at her hands. “Yeah. With all my heart.”

“Were you together?”

“Not until after I rescued him from the Hydra factory.” She sighed. “It took us way too long to get there. But once we were…” She smiled to herself again. “Maybe that’s why we felt invincible. It wasn’t the right timing, in the middle of a war.” She looked at Tony. “But you don’t really get to chose who you fall in love with. Or when.” She finally leaned back in her chair, and lifted her hand to run her fingers through her hair, messing it up. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about anything I could have done different, to save him.” She huffed a short, humorless laugh. “Even though it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Everyone else I knew is dead. Even if I had saved him, I wouldn’t have been able to see him again. He would still be dead by the time I woke up…”

“So even Captain America has demons,” Tony said. “Who knew?”

She tilted her head slightly and smiled at him. “That was probably more than you ever wanted to know about me, right?”

“No, it’s enlightening, to see what drives you.”

“Proof that Captain America isn’t actually perfect.”

“Nobody’s perfect. It’s what makes us human.”

“Yeah…” She picked up her cup again, and finished the last of the coffee. It was cold. Tony had long since finished his drink while she told her story. When the last dregs were gone, she stood up. “Thanks for listening to me. I’ve… I’ve never told anyone that before.”

He smiled up at her. “What are friends for, Cap?”

“Friends, huh?” She walked by him and tossed her cup in the trash as she walked out the door. She stood in the chill, dark air and wrapped her arms around herself, but not against the cold.

Tony followed her outside. She heard him stop behind her, and then he said, in a quiet, gentle voice so very unlike Tony, “Steph.”

She turned around to look at him and he took her face in both his hands and kissed her suddenly, but slowly. She didn’t pull back. Instead she leaned into it. Kissing Tony was very different from kissing Bucky. And kissing Bucky was the only experience she had. Kissing someone new was like having to relearn all over again how to kiss properly.

After a moment, they pulled back, but stayed close, his hands still on her face. “Tony,” she breathed out. “My place isn’t far from here.” She finally opened her eyes and looked at him. He was shorter than Bucky too. “Do you want to come back with me?”

He didn’t joke, or taunt. He just said, “Yes.”

Sleeping with Tony was also very different from sleeping with Bucky. She had never really put much thought into sex, so it never occurred to her that sleeping with someone you weren’t in love with would be so drastically different from sleeping with someone you were in love with. But still, it was comforting. It eased the tension, and the ache of loneliness. But it was still only a temporary fix for a problem that couldn’t be solved.

 

In the morning, Steph didn’t have the moment of confusion so typical with these kinds of encounters. Even before she was fully awake, she remembered everything that had happened the previous night. So she expected to see Tony asleep beside her when she finally opened her eyes. She lay on her side for a minute, looking at him, and then she carefully got out of bed, making as little movement as possible.

This would be the time when she normally went jogging, before the sun was even up. But not today. Today she padded down the hallway in her bare feet and walked across the cold linoleum of the kitchen. She set up the coffee maker and then leaned against the counter beside it as it bubbled and brewed away quietly. She crossed her arms and looked out the kitchen window at the dark sky. She let her mind wander, and didn’t focus on anything in particular.

Some time later, maybe a few minutes, maybe an hour, well after the coffee was done brewing, Tony wandered out of her bedroom, yawning. He walked into the kitchen and said, “You know this is way too early for any reasonable person to be awake, right?” He saw her expression, and then sighed, probably realizing what she was about to say.

She passed him a mug of coffee and took her own. “Tony,” she said, looking at him. But then she hesitated. She had a speech planned, but suddenly it didn’t sound right in her head. So instead, she said, “Thanks, for last night. I really did need that, and I’m sure you did too… But it was a mistake. That’s not going to happen again. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, Cap. I know.” He drank the coffee and made a face, but then took another sip anyway. “Kind of expected it.”

“Go apologize to Pepper. I don’t know exactly what this was for you. But you should be with Pepper. The only thing stopping the two of you from being together is yourselves.”

“It’s more complicated than that…” he mumbled.

“No, it’s not,” she said. “You both love each other. You’re not in relationships with other people. You’re both alive. Just be together. Because you never know when one of those things will change.”

He looked at her, processing what she said. After a minute of silence, she looked away, and instead focused on her coffee. She drank it slowly, enjoying the bitter flavor of unsweetened coffee.

“You know, Steph, you don’t have to spend the rest of your life thinking you’ll never be in love again.”

Steph laughed. That statement was so ridiculous coming from a person as emotionally repressed at Tony. “Well when you learn how to get over losing the person who means the most to you in the whole world, let me know. I’d love to know how to do that.”

“Time,” he said, watching her. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard. It just takes time.”

“Yes, it’s always about time. No time to grab Bucky’s hand, no time to safely land the plane, so much time that everyone I know is dead. Captain America, a soldier out of time,” she said bitterly, and turned around to rest her palms against the edge of the counter.

“Steph…”

“It’s okay.” She glanced back at him. “I’m serious about you and Pepper. Go be with her, because you can be with her. Because this, what happened between us, this will never happen again.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “So are you kicking me out, then?”

She turned and looked at him, then she smiled a bit sadly and shook her head. “No, we’re still friends. We’re just going to go back to being friends, nothing more.”

“If that’s what you want, Cap.”

“It is.” She turned and leaned her hip against the counter again and picked up her coffee to finish it. “Don’t worry, Tony. I’m fine. I’m Captain America, after all.” She smiled lightly. Maybe it would get easier with time, but so far it only seemed to make everything harder, and further remind her of how far from home she really was.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I threw Tony into a random scene in the Deleted Scenes story, and had a hard time writing dialogue between him and Steph where they weren't flirting. So I kind of decided to go with it, and then this happened. It's a separate story because I haven't fully decided if I want this to fall on the same timeline as A Girl, a Guy, and the War. But I suppose you could read it that way, if you like. I just really don't want to get into any love triangle bullshit.


End file.
